Certified Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist and Supervisor

How I Work:

When therapists attempt to describe how they approach the work of counseling, or psychotherapy, I believe they are attempting to describe how change occurs. Let me attempt to explain how I believe change occurs in counseling.

I believe that you desire to be heard, understood, and known. You understand yourself in the context of your past experiences and your relationships. A critical task of therapy is to help you explore your experiences and help you discover the meanings you have made of them. The two primary tasks of therapy are to facilitate the exploration of life experiences and to illuminate and organize the personal meanings that you have made of these experiences. When these two tasks are complete, you can experience growth and change because a new experience of yourself has occurred. Couples can experience a new experience of their relationship past and present.

If you are familiar with the field of psychotherapy, this approach generally falls under the theoretical orientations named social constructivism, intersubjective, narrative, and to some extent, existential and gestalt work. In the work I do with individuals and couples around relationships, this orientation is called Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. When I am working with individuals around trauma, I work from the orientations of Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) and Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR).

For more information about these approaches to psychotherapy, please visit these websites:

www.iceeft.com

www.emdr.org or www.emdria.com

www.aedpinstitute.org

Finally, I believe that change occurs in an atmosphere of trust. It is important for individuals considering undertaking the process of psychotherapy to have a strong relationship with their therapist. If after meeting me, you do not feel that there is a potential for a strong therapeutic relationship, I maintain a referral list of talented therapists to assist you in your search for the individual that can best meet your needs.